EXCLUSIVE: JODI ARIAS DESPERATE ESCAPE PLAN

ACCUSED murderer JODI ARIAs has hatched a desperate, last-ditch plan to walk free from jail – and she’s tried to drag The ENQUIRER into her twisted scheme!

Now on trial for the grisly murder of her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander in 2008, Arias is trying to trash Alexander’s reputa­tion and portray him as a violent, sex-crazed deviant who abused her so horrifically she was forced to kill him, sources say.

So she recruited her mother to contact The ENQUIRER and asked us to publish “incriminating letters” that Alexander al­legedly wrote during their romance. But a judge has already tossed those letters out of court.

Despite the judge’s decision, a source close to Arias, 32, told The ENQUIRER: “Jodi is certain these letters are her ticket to freedom.

“She knows her only chance at acquittal is to convince the jury she was abused and that her ex-boyfriend was a bad guy. It’s disgusting that she’s willing to drag a dead man’s name through the mud so she can go free.”

The trial has riveted America with Jodi’s sexy image and the bloody evidence dominating cable news shows like Nancy Grace, national websites and local newspapers.

Arias first met Alexander, a mo­tivational speaker, while she was working as an aspiring photogra­pher at a Las Vegas convention in September 2006. They immediately hit it off and soon after began dating. But the romance turned stormy within months. Friends of Alexander claim he broke up with Arias in 2007 after she became pos­sessive and started stalking him.

But they continued to have sex, and Alexander’s mangled and bloodied body was soon found decomposing in his Mesa, Ariz., home on June 9, 2008.

At first, Arias denied any involvement in Alexander’s death but eventually claimed she’d killed him in self-defense. Prosecu­tors say she murdered him in a jealous rage.

As her trial unfolded in Phoenix, jurors and spectators listened in horror, some wiping away tears, as a member of the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s office described how Alexander was stabbed at least 27 times and shot in the face with a gun that was reportedly stolen from the California home of Arias’ family.

According to that same testimony, Alexan­der’s throat was also slashed so brutally that he was nearly decapitated.

As blonde bombshell Arias changed her look to that of a demure brunette wearing specs for the televised trial, her mother San­dy Arias met with an ENQUIRER reporter in Phoenix and handed over photocopies of two letters allegedly handwritten by Alexander.

In the first letter, dated Nov. 27, 2006, Al­exander asks Arias to wear “boy’s briefs” that he can “rip off.” He also asks her to wear one of his shirts with his engraved cuff links so he can see his initials while she performs oral sex on him.

The second letter was dated March 2, 2008, just three months before Alexander’s murder. In it, he admits that he once hit Arias “in the face.” He also claims that marrying her would help erase his “deviant” thoughts.

“Jodi wanted me to get these let­ters out to the public. I am only doing this because she asked me to,” her mother tearfully told an ENQUIRER reporter.

“Jodi has several other letters in her possession, but she’s holding off on releasing them.”

According to Mrs. Arias, only electronic copies of the letters exist.

“Jodi told me that the originals were destroyed,” she said.

The ENQUIRER learned that Jodi Arias tried to enter the letters as evidence in 2010, but a judge deemed them “inadmissible” after they were analyzed by a handwriting expert.

“These letters are quite literally the only card Jodi has left to play,” noted the source. “Getting them out to the public is her strategy to be acquitted of murder and escape the death penalty.

“That’s how desperate and evil she is. She’s manipulating her own mother from behind bars.”